Ricardo Pérez-de la Fuente held up a piece of ancient amber,
peering at the 40-million-year-old insect inside. Preserved whole
after being trapped in sap that hardened over millennia, the
fierce-looking larva was a favorite: Its image adorned his computer
desktop. “Looks like a monster, almost — full of spikes,” Pérez-de
la Fuente said. Then he added: “It’s going back.” A Harvard
postdoctoral fellow and expert in fossilized insects, Pérez-de la
Fuente was standing that late May day in the basement of the
Northwest Laboratory, near one of the many cabinets that house the
50,000 to 60,000 fossil insects in the Museum of Comparative
Zoology’s paleoentomology collection. He had pulled out a drawer
holding hundreds of insects about to be returned to Germany in
repayment of a long-forgotten loan. In 1934, Harvard instructor on
economic entomology Charles T. Brues borrowed the specimens from
the University of Königsberg in what was then East Prussia. Why...